Polpettone

A wonderfully hearty meal.

May is the last month of autumn.  Slowly but surely, the days are getting shorter; it will not be long before I have to get up in the dark.  Not pleasant… but May is also my favourite month.  Both Gourmet Traveller and delicious. have their Italian issue.  How I love Italian food!

I invite my friends for dinner, and asked them to pick something from the magazine.  She’d picked the Polpettone wrapped in Pancetta.  I’m really glad she picked this recipe, even though the dinner didn’t eventuate.  As usual, the recipes from this fabulous mag never fails to please.

This dish is gutsy.  Vegetarians step aside – in this dish, it’s all amount mince and cured pork.  It is equally heavy, so you better be hungry!  The best thing about this is the sauce, oooh, the sauce is very very good.  I have licked all the plates pans :)  In fact, the it is so good, I can go without the polpettone and just mop up the sauce with bread :)  Or maybe pasta…

This dish is relatively easy to make – it’s just a meat ball, wrapped in pancetta then simmered with tomato and red wine sauce.  The food is prepared and cooked within an hour -  you wouldn’t think something can taste so good with such little effort.

Ingredients

• 100ml olive oil
• 2 onions
• 4 garlic cloves
• 2 tsp of margoram and oregano, chopped
• 1 tsp sage leaves, chopped
• 500g of each, veal and pork mince
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup breadcrumbs
• 40g parmesan, grated
• 16 wide, thin, flat pancetta (the pancetta at the grocer was the circular ones and unfortunately, procuitto wasn’t agreeing with the slicer, so I bought some thinly sliced bacon instead).
• 2 bay leaves
• 3 cups passatta
• 250ml red wine
• 100g unsalted butter
• 2 tsp of each, salt and pepper.

To cook

1. I accidentally sweated all of the garlic and onion in a fry pan, but the recipe actually called for half, but wasn’t too much f a drama.  I took out half of the onion before mixing the herbs into the other half.  The herby half should be cooled till room temperature.
2. Next put al the mince together in a large bowl, along with the breadcrumb, parmesan, eggs and the cooled herb and onion mixture.  Add in the salt and pepper too.  Now sink your hands in and squeesh it all up with your hands to get an even mixture.  Shape this into 8 balls (polpettone).
3. Wrap the balls with the cured meat of your choice then place this in the fridge for 10 minutes.
4. Heat up the rest of the oil in a large pan, then brown the polpettone on both sides.  Take these out onto a plate.
5. Next, add the onion and garlic into the mixture, cook until translusent before adding in bay leaves, pasatta and red wine.
6. Add in the polpettone into the pan and bring everything to the simmer.  Cover and cook for about 10 minutes before taking the lid off and cook for a further 10 minutes, when the sauce has been reduced by half.  While cooking, I absent mindedly skimmed the surface of scums.  I wonder if that helps.
7. By this stage the polpettone is cooked.  Take them out and keep warm while you reduce by half again (5 – 10 min).  Stir in the butter to finish off the sauce.
8. It’s then ready!  Plate it up with some sauce and shaved parmesan.  Serve this with bread and red wine.  You won’t be disappointed :)